There’s Some Uncertainty That Happens When You’re Coming Down From Great Heights

A report from Mansion Global. “The gap between homes’ listing prices and sales prices is widening in a number of markets. The California Association of Realtors, for instance, found that the state’s sales-to-list-price ratio hit its lowest point in 20 months in October. A large disparity between listing and sales prices can indicate that sellers are increasingly out of step with a changing market, and it may be time for a reality check—as well as discounts on listing prices.”

“‘We often see houses listed with the expectation of sellers that pricing has been continuing upward, and a lot of times, they price their homes by extrapolating continued upward market movement,’ said Paul Habibi, professor at the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate. ‘But once the market stalls out, those houses sit on the market for longer, there’s a scarcity of buyers, and lower bids. Sellers start to lower their asking prices or else accept offers below list.'”

“However, real estate analysts say, a decrease in sales-to-list-price ratios does not forebode a significant downturn. ‘If you look at the broader economy, the fundamentals are still strong,’ said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist with Redfin. ‘The GDP is growing, and unemployment is low. Sales prices are still growing. In order for it to be a real reason to worry, prices would have to start going negative.'”

“The hot Seattle real estate market seems to have reached a turning point, with the average home selling for 0.6% below listing price in October, the first time prices were below asking since 2014.”

“‘Prices have gone up so much recently in Seattle that buyers have reached a point where they’re saying they’re not going to accept these,’ Ms. Fairweather said. ‘And with mortgage interest rates going up, more people are thinking of renting instead of buying.'”

“Seattle is not the only market experiencing a slowdown in sales and sales prices. In Los Angeles, too, 23.8% of sellers sold their homes for below the listing price this September, while the median home price in Los Angeles County saw a 3.6% gain, the smallest in three years.”

“‘We’ve had double-digit annual price increases in several of the years after the recession,’ Mr. Habibi said. ‘Now we’re seeing the market start to slow down because the pace of annual increases is generally unsustainable at that rate.'”

“Third quarter market reports also reflected a cooling of home sales in Manhattan. The borough is experiencing its most significant slowdown in a decade, with sales declining by 11% compared to quarter three of last year, according to Stribling & Associates. As in Seattle and Los Angeles, this is leading to an increase in disparities between asking and sales prices.”

“‘On the whole, there is more negotiability, and an increase in inventory,’ said Elizabeth Ann Stribling-Kivlan, president of Stribling & Associates. ‘We had a real run, but we’re definitely seeing a slowdown. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing.'”

“Nationwide, home sales are decreasing, and property is lingering on the market for longer. But other real estate experts agree with Ms. Stribling-Kivlan that this does not presage a major economic downturn. Instead, they say, the trend represents a normalizing of the market after moving for several years at a frenetic pace.”

“‘There are consistent clues that we’re seeing a shift in the velocity of the market, and moving away from an extreme sellers market,’ said Javier Vivas, director of economic research for Realtor.com. ‘There’s some uncertainty that happens when you’re coming down from great heights. But those higher-priced, historically hot markets are really now getting more of that correction and moderation.'”

From the Foundation for Financial Education. “Over the last several weekends, the nonprofit, Boston-based brokerage Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) partnered with big banks and hosted events all across the country, attracting tens of thousands of attendees. These events are meant to help people apply for subprime home loans.”

“But instead of being shocked by the fact that these risky loans are making a comeback, and rather than advising the public to proceed with caution, media outlets and financial institutions are looking at this resurgence as if it is somehow a good thing for the American economy. Many are even claiming that this time will be different than the last.”

“During the housing crisis, Magdalene Altidor lost her home to foreclosure. And yet, she was one of the first people in line when NACA hosted an event in Miami. ‘I left home, it was about 4 a.m. I’m ready to purchase a home,’ she told CNBC. She later added that ‘Homeownership is freedom.'”

“Bruce Marks, CEO of NACA, commented on these non-prime loans saying, ‘It’s a national disgrace about the low amount of homeownership, mortgages for low- and moderate-income people and for minority homebuyers.'”

And sellers are always happy to have the realtors come up with comps that show the value is higher than the seller thought it would be.

Just human nature.

Just as people would be upset when I told them that the valuation was not what they think it should be, but if they want the house why worry what I thought it was worth. After all they were buying it, I wasn’t.

It looks like the realtors are working to talk asking prices down. They only get paid on a transaction. Presumably the lie today is lets price it aggressively, and get a bidding war going. Then after a few weeks with only one offer the seller wises up and accepts. Realtor gets paid

‘the median home price in Los Angeles County saw a 3.6% gain, the smallest in three years’

The median is a lagging statistic. It can be going up even when foreclosures are flooding in.

‘We’ve had double-digit annual price increases in several of the years after the recession…Now we’re seeing the market start to slow down because the pace of annual increases is generally unsustainable at that rate’

Not even that. It only equates the living area to the sales price. No dirt is ever factored into the equation as well as garages, pools, outbuildings, wells, septic system, impact fees, fences, driveways, etc.

Price per sf is a very rough measure and not used as a metric in any serious real estate analysis. It can be used in certain limited macro analytical processes as the larger the sample size, the more that differences iron out.

This topic is amusing. Thorough analysis of construction costs or price/ft2 would only be useful if housing wasn’t in an advanced stage of mania. It doesn’t show up on your mortgage statement, merely how deeply you are in debt.

It works ok for estimating and bidding. It doesn’t work at all post construction unless a detailed take off of other items in the transaction that aren’t captured in sq/ft metric. As always, depreciation must be factored in post construction.

The price per sf is the only relevant statistic presented and almost none of the cratering posts show a decline in the price per sf, only a decline in the median home sf. It is as if the crater poster is only selecting the markets with anomalous declines in median sf size.

“During the housing crisis, Magdalene Altidor lost her home to foreclosure. And yet, she was one of the first people in line when NACA hosted an event in Miami. ‘I left home, it was about 4 a.m. I’m ready to purchase a home,’ she told CNBC. She later added that ‘Homeownership is freedom.’”

She sure has impeccable timing on purchasing the peak, lucky for her, she can simply “walk away” as she did the last round her home was foreclosed. I guess these type of “freedom” seekers are what make it better for us more savvy buyers as they just add to the pool of soon to be foreclosed homes

Sure, if you actually own the house outright and don’t pay taxes, or have very low taxes. That still ignores the maintenance and repair issues that plague all “homeowners.” Personally, I think renting is “freedom.” You can decide on a whim to go someplace else, pull up stakes and leave.

‘I left home, it was about 4 a.m. I’m ready to purchase a home,’ she told CNBC’

‘The hot Seattle real estate market seems to have reached a turning point…the first time prices were below asking since 2014’

It was late in 2014 many markets were rolling over. Then Mel Watt and the boys started easing loan standards and kept that up since. So now we are seeing really obvious stuff like this woman in Miami. IMO, these things show up when they are out of buyers.

May 25, 2018

“In his corner of American finance, where hard selling meets hard luck, Angelo Christian is a star. Each time Christian sells a home loan, the company he works for, American Financial Network Inc., takes as much as 5 percent. Many of Christian’s customers have no savings, poor credit, or low income—sometimes all three. Some are like Joseph Taylor, a corrections officer who saw Christian’s roadside billboard touting zero-down mortgages. Taylor had recently filed for bankruptcy because of his $25,000 in credit card debt. But he just bought his first home for $120,000 with a zero-down loan from Christian’s company. Monthly debt payments now eat up half his take-home pay. ‘If he can help me, he can help anyone,’ Taylor says. ‘My credit history was just horrible.’”

“Christian can do this kind of deal because he is, in effect, making the loan on behalf of the federal government through its most important affordable housing program. It’s a sweet deal: He gets his nearly risk-free commission. Taylor puts no money down. If things go south, the government ultimately bears the risk. Many borrowers ‘are living paycheck to paycheck and, if they lose their jobs, they go into default immediately,’ says John Burns, a housing consultant.”

Taylor puts no money down. If things go south, the government ultimately bears the risk. Many borrowers ‘are living paycheck to paycheck and, if they lose their jobs, they go into default immediately,’ says John Burns, a housing consultant.”

Good thing these are gov backed loans. It’s almost like the gov wants the defaults…

Borrowers Are Tapping Their Homes for Cash, Even as Rates Rise
Wall Street Journal-58 minutes ago
Cash-out refis played a big role in the decade-ago housing crisis, when many … Borrowers who miss mortgage payments can end up in foreclosure. Also …

‘I left home, it was about 4 a.m. I’m ready to purchase a home,’ she told CNBC’

No, Magdalene. Thanks to government meddling in the housing market, driven by patronage and graft rackets, you are going to go deep in debt for a house you can’t afford and won’t be able to hang onto, with the inevitable losses transferred to taxpayers. Again.

That’s a great idea. Since Bitcoin is (supposedly) a standalone, peer2peer currency system that operates independently of central bank issued fiat currency, there’s no further need to exchange Bitcoins for dollars, or vice versa. You’ll be on your own, HODLers, after the Cryptxit…good luck!

IdeasIs a Recession Coming?
If you’re going to worry about the economy, tumbling stocks are the least of America’s financial troubles right now.
Nov 23, 2018
Derek Thompson
Staff writer at The Atlantic
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on November 20, 2018.
Brendan McDermid / Reuters

In December 2007, Larry Kudlow, then a talking head for the business network CNBC, proclaimed, “There’s no recession coming. It’s not going to happen.” That same month, the economy plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
…

What a joke that this author is ok suffering the loss all the way down back to zero. A true HODLer / stubborn optimist. When I first heard about crypto from colleagues I asked how could any currency not controlled by government ever become mainstream and the response was that whole “decentralized / free market” currency BS. Not saying I know what could happen with it or if it could become the new future of currency but I still can’t wrap my head around how it would ever be allowed by our government unless they took it over. The “idea” of a decentralized money system doesn’t jive well with our puppet masters. Emperors New Currency (cryptonick?)

Did you BTFD, now that Cryptogeddon has ended and it’s safe again to go long?

Bitcoin recovers above $4,000 after dropping to over one-year low
Janna Herron | USA TODAY Updated 20 minutes ago
…
The cryptocurrency’s most recent troubles began in mid-November, when it dropped below $6,000. That was a turnaround from its relatively steady October when U.S. stocks got hammered.

Bitcoin enthusiasm has waned dramatically since the last holiday season. The cryptocurrency jumped from $6,088.35 in mid-November 2017 to $19,326.49 on Dec. 17, 2017. Year to date in 2018, bitcoin has declined almost 70 percent.

Cryptocurrencies in general are facing increased regulatory scrutiny, putting pressure on their values.

Bitcoin has lost 40 percent of its value in the last two weeks
A dramatic turnaround from 2017’s gains
By Andrew Liptak
Nov 25, 2018, 4:29pm EST
Stop Motion by Michele Doying / The Verge

Bitcoin is in the middle of an astounding price drop, reaching prices as low as $3,520 in recent days and wiping out all gains from coins purchased this year. As of press time, the price was hovering around $3,900, a roughly 40 percent drop from two weeks ago. The result is the worst price drop since April 2013, refreshing old doubts about the soundness of bitcoin as an investment vehicle.

It’s a dramatic turn from 2017, when the value passed $15,000 in the beginning of December to peak just below $20,000. After that, prices plummeted. By January of this year, it lost half of its peak value, and continued to drop. The drop has been particularly dramatic in the last couple of weeks.

Bitcoin slumped on Tuesday to its lowest this year as prices fell as much as 10 per cent to breach US$4,300, coinciding with broader drops in the world’s financial markets. Photo: Agence France-Presse
Start-ups
As bitcoin prices fall, mining cryptocurrencies is no longer profitable for many
– Bitcoin prices fell nearly 30 per cent over the past week, hitting a 13-month low of about US$4,500
– Loss-making cryptocurrency miners are dumping plenty of their mining rigs

I don’t understand bitcoin, I truly don’t. I have a question though, isn’t one function of bitcoin mining the verification of transactions? If mining isn’t profitable and stops, then transactions can’t be verified?
I have heard it takes 10 min or so to verify a transaction.. My $100 bill gets accepted faster than that.

With the value of bitcoin having fallen by about 70% since its peak late last year, the mother of all bubbles has now gone bust. More generally, cryptocurrencies have entered a not-so-cryptic apocalypse. The value of leading coins such as Ether, EOS, Litecoin and XRP have all fallen by over 80%, thousands of other digital currencies have plummeted by 90%-99%, and the rest have been exposed as outright frauds. No one should be surprised by this: four out of five initial coin offerings (ICOs) were scams to begin with.

Can anybody who gets it explain why $4000 is the “psychological mark” for Bitcoin, given that it’s crashed through $19,000, $18,000, $17,000, … , $5,000, and now $4,000? Is $4,000 different than all those other multiples of $1,000 it’s crashed through?

Bitcoin fell sharply over the Thanksgiving weekend, dragging the wider cryptocurrency market down with it, including ripple (XRP) and ethereum’s ether, as last week’s huge sell-off surged back, destroying hopes the bitcoin market had found a floor.

The bitcoin price dropped to a low of $3,604 according to CoinDesk’s bitcoin price tracker, before rebounding back over the psychological $4,000 mark. The bitcoin price is currently hovering around $4,000 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, as the volatility seen throughout November continues to cause chaos for traders, investors, and exchanges.

Just like any multiple of 1000 is a psychological mark for the Dow or S&P, and any multiple of 100 is so for any stock, these round numbers force humans to buy (never sell) the underlying instrument with renewed vigor. The sentiment is similar to that which causes us to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, etc by generally burning money for no tangible return other than nostalgia, which is in the mind anyway and could be experienced to a large degree without spending a dime.

Much of investing these days is based on psychology anyway, not reason or results. These “marks” serve as periodic jolts of that persuade the irrational hordes to become even more so.

‘If you look at the broader economy, the fundamentals are still strong,’ said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist with Redfin. ‘The GDP is growing, and unemployment is low.

Daryl neglects to mention that after ten years of QE, household and pubic debt has tripled, and housing, along with just about every other asset class, is a bursting bubble. And 93 million people are “out of the work force” but not counted as unemployed in another statistical sleight of hand. Wages for the proles have been stagnant since the ’70s in real terms due to globalism and the Fed’s debasement of the currency, and living wage jobs are scarcer than work boots at a Hillary Clinton rally. So what’s that malarky about strong fundamentals, Daryl?

I am a non(FB) I think. In any case I bought in 2011 when both prices and interest rates where at temporary lows. If I had to buy my same house today per Zillow (not perfect I know) and present interest rates. My monthly nut would be triple. The economy has being doing well, but not that well. So correction has to happen.

S.D. HOME SELLERS SLASHING PRICESArea leads the nation with the most price reductions this year
BY PHILLIP MOLNAR

A year ago the three bedroom Craftsman home on 2873 Upas St. would have been one of the hottest on the market, receiving multiple offers and selling within days of its listing.

But today, after sitting on the market for 44 days and four price reductions later, the remodeled 1943 home in the popular North Park-Morley Field neighborhood doesn’t have an offer.

That isn’t a sign that the bottom is falling out of the market. Instead, after years of rapid price increases, experts say the market is becoming more stable and for the first time in a long time, it is shifting in favor of buyers.

That shift is most evident when you look at the number of times sellers have reduced prices. The share of home listings with a price cut grew to its highest level in at least eight years, says a recent analysis from Trulia. San Diego had the most reductions, 20.5 percent, of the 100 biggest metro areas in the United States so far this year. (It tied with Tampa, Florida, which also saw 20.5 percent of homes with a price cut.)

“Three months ago, the feeling was, ‘I better make an offer on that house, and how high do I need to go?'” said Gary Kent, a La Jolla-based real estate agent. “The psychology has really changed to, ‘You know what, how much can I get off from the price?'”
…

“A year ago the three bedroom Craftsman home on 2873 Upas St. would have been one of the hottest on the market, receiving multiple offers and selling within days of its listing.“

A year ago the Chinese specuvestors were in full money laundering/ shell game mode. That’s been shut down and anyone that is willing to spend over a mil on a home is SoCal would likely want to live somewhere else. The price history on that shack is interesting to say the least and that upstairs 2nd kitchen does not seem to make much sense. The realtor who wrote that highlight failed to mention “2nd unit up the stairs from your living room, enjoy the sounds of your renters opening your front door and galloping up the stairs”. I just don’t see the potential in that shack which is probably why it keeps changing hands.

Stocks, bonds and commodities from copper to crude oil to burlap are staging a rare simultaneous retreat, putting global markets on track for one of their worst years on record and deepening a sense of unease on Wall Street.

By one measure, global stocks and bonds are both on track to finish the year in the red for the first time in at least a quarter-century, said Belinda Boa, head of active investments for Asia Pacific at BlackRock in Hong Kong. Major stock benchmarks in the U.S., Europe, China and South Korea have all slid…

Investors have been chasing yields and returns for all that QE money slushing around for a decade now. Every sector has been saturated – equities, commodities, real estate, International and anything that is the new hotness like crypto has seen the same thing happen – discovery quickly followed by a flood of (cheap) money all hoping to get in before things ‘blow up’.

Bitcoin plunged to $3,738 at the moment. Down nearly 40% from two weeks ago, and down 81% from peak-mania of $20,078 on December 17, 2017. It’s back where it had first been on August 12, 2017. It looks like a magnificent bubble that is imploding, but “bubble” is a misnomer; it’s a magnificent scam, where people paid a lot of money – many billions of dollars – to get an essentially useless digital entity whose price then dissolved into where it had come from.

7 minute readBeware of cryptocurrency
There are more than 1,300 cryptocurrencies worldwide.
By SALLEH BUANG
November 26, 2018 @ 10:00am
SALLEH BUANG

LATE last week, a good friend suggested that I revisit the subject of cryptocurrency in the light of recent expressions of interest by our government leaders.

She said since my earlier article on the subject (Are we ready for bitcoin? NST, June 15, 2017), several new issues had cropped up — not all of which had cast a positive light on the subject.

The https://cointelegraph.com portal describes crytocurrency as a digital or virtual currency designed to work as a medium of exchange, using cryptography to secure and verify transactions as well as to control the creation of new units of a particular cryptocurrency.

Also referred to as “digital currencies”, virtual currencies are known as bitcoins, ethereum, litecoin, ripples, etc. What is now causing concern to many quarters is their current “extreme daily price volatility”, which makes them unsuitable as “a store of value”, while problems of access, scale, and lack of legal tender status reduce their utility value as either a medium of exchange or a unit of account. They are also susceptible to price manipulation.

The article about list price to sales price ratio is somewhat misleading . It depends on how their mls calculates. In some mls systems it is based on the list price at the time of contract. If there had been list price reductions prior to contract then the actual ratio would be lower. It is a matter of accepted convention. If a property had an original list price of $120k, later reduced to 100k and sold for 99k, then the ratio is 99%. Obviously does not quite reveal the real market conditions in play or actual gap between seller expectations and market reality.

And no way to track it other than screenshots or personally archieving them, which I do on local homes I watch sit, reduce price, then disappear only to come back as a new listing soon after. I would be interested to see a site that offered such pricing visibility